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Is the US worse than North Korea for malnutrition deaths?

This surprising claim was spotted circulating on social media: ‘The United States has surpassed China and North Korea in deaths from malnutrition’. The claim used analysis from the Global Burden...

2026-06-20

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Does Europe suffer more heat deaths than the US?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: (00:31) Claims have circulated on the internet that Europe sees a particularly high number of deaths from heat waves, especially w...

2026-06-17

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Andrew Ross Sorkin: What can the Great Crash of 1929 tell us about today?

The Great Crash of 1929 has faded into history, but financial journalist and author Andrew Ross Sorkin argues it holds vital lessons for today. Andrew came into the studio in London to discuss what ...

2026-06-13

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Education, Education, Education (and immigration)

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: (00:32) The internet is abuzz with the claim that twenty-seven young migrants are hired for every British young person. We explore...

2026-06-10

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Factchecking claims that 400 churches were burned to the ground in France

In certain corners of the internet some suspicious numbers are cropping up again and again. People claiming that 400 churches have been burnt to the ground or attacked in an assortment of countries, i...

2026-06-06

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Debunking the claim that migrants will get half of new homes

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: The Daily Express claims that ‘Migrants will get half of all new homes’, based on a calculation from the Conservatives. We explain...

2026-06-03

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The known unknowns of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

On the 17th of May the World Health Organisation declared a new outbreak of Ebolavirus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an International Emergency. Ebola virus is an extremely nasty viral ...

2026-05-30

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Does a fall in the UK's healthy life expectancy mean what you think it means?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: Headlines have claimed that “healthy life expectancy” in the UK has fallen by two years. What does this actually mean? A new gove...

2026-05-27

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Is the ‘loneliness epidemic’ real?

What does it mean if you say that something is an epidemic? In the case of a virus, it usually means that it is spreading rapidly and that more and more people are getting infected. When a disease i...

2026-05-23

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Are refugees more likely to commit crime?

Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. On the programme: Last week, Annunziata Rees-Mogg took to X to post a claim about the proportion of sex offences in Dorset that are committed...

2026-05-20

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Erdos Problem 1196: Can AI now solve maths that no human can?

It’s said that AI could soon be coming for the jobs of artists, lawyers, and software engineers. But it might now also be threatening a role at the height of academia – are pure mathematicians safe? ...

2026-05-16

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Why it’s wrong to say vaping is as bad for you as smoking

According to the World Health organisation, smoking kills some 7 million people every year. It is one of the world’s leading causes of preventable death. Because smoking causes lung cancer and other ...

2026-05-09

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Does it take 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef?

If you spend much time on social media, and we don’t necessarily recommend it, then you’ve probably come across a strange fascination with water consumption. Mainly, this is people telling you that u...

2026-05-02

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Have RFK and MAHA really changed American views on vaccines?

Vaccine policy in the US is something of an ideological battleground. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is a vaccine sceptic, and since taking office he has attempted to remake US vaccine policy....

2026-04-25

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Is Trump right that wind turbines are killing millions of birds?

US president Donald Trump is no fan of wind turbines, or windmills as he calls them. Not only does he think they ruin the view from a golf course he owns in Scotland, but they are also deadly to bird...

2026-04-18

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Dr Spock’s dangerous advice on baby sleep

Sometimes it is obvious to everyone when an idea is harmful, or a piece of advice is damaging. But not always. Occasionally bad ideas and terrible advice end up being accepted in society and supported...

2026-04-11

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How likely is ‘likely’?

When you’re listening to the news, you will often hear words that are meant to communicate the probability of something happening. A terrorist attack is “a realistic possibility”, the spread of a ce...

2026-04-04

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How much water does AI consume?

As Artificial Intelligence continues to expand rapidly, some people have raised concerns about its potential environmental impact - in particular its use of water, which is used to cool both data cent...

2026-03-28

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Paul Ehrlich: The man who bet England wouldn’t exist by the year 2000

Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling book The Population Bomb opens with an apocalyptic paragraph. “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” it states. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of peop...

2026-03-21

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Transgender women in sport: Does ‘comparable’ mean ‘equal’?

In most sports, men compete against men and women compete against women. That is generally considered fair, because men are faster, more powerful and have greater endurance. But there is an ongoing c...

2026-03-14

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